Historically, oil palm trunks (OPT) were burnt to make way for replanting. Burning of oil palm biomass reduces the risk of potentialpests and diseases. In 1994, open burning of crop residues in Malaysia was banned due  to environmental and health concerns. This led to the practice of the zero-burning technique. With extensive oil palm replanting, […]

The manipulation of microbials such as fungi, bacteria, mychorrhiza and axtinomycetes as biocontrol agents (BCAs) is being investigated to control Ganoderma, the causal agent of basal stem rot (BSR) disease of oil palm. The biologica; properties of several antigonistic fungi, namely, Trichoderma (Sariah and Zakaria, 2000; Izzati and Abdullah, 2008), Aspergillus (Shukla and Uniyal, 1989), […]

Basal stem rot (BSR) disease can cause considerable damage in oil palm by bisidiomycete fungi identified as Ganoderma spp. (Idris, 1999). Biological control in Ganoderma disease management has been extensively explored in recent years. Biological control is the use of natural or modified organisms, genes and gene products to reduce the effects of plant pathogens and […]

Diagnosis of Ganoderma infection in oil palm is based on the presence of basidiomata of the pathogen on the stem base or frond bases or roots. To conduct various studies on Ganoderma in oil palm, a Ganoderma selective medium (GSM) was developed. The medium was used to isolate the pathogen from any part of the […]